Historical Truth Quotes

One duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Oh do not read history, for that I know must be false.

A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.

That the apostolic office is temporary, is a plain historical fact.

You may pronounce us guilty a thousand times over but the goddess of the eternal court of history will tear to tatters the brief of the state prosecutor and the sentence of this court.

Make-believe has so long held sway that truth arrives on the scene with all the aspect of an ogre. As a consequence, the real history of their country is a sealed book to the vast majority of the Irish. They neither ask for it nor is it given them.

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.

People bang on all the time about whether what I've done is the truth or not. Well, to me, history is just a series of elaborate fictions.

I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.

All history, so far as it is not supported by contemporary evidence, is romance.

History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

Lies are beginning to be solidified and made into historical fact…. The truth is all I want for history.

Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes.

To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to the maker, then it takes on a quality that will confuse humanity.

Nothing is more difficult than trying to correct history.

Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.

The first law of history is to dread uttering a falsehood; the next is not to fear stating the truth; lastly, the historian's writings should be open to no suspicion of partiality or animosity.

The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.

I find that the history books that we teach our kids with are not fully truthful, in my opinion.

Saying slavery was the cause of secession isn't politically correct; it's correct correct.

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.

Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.

History may never have all the facts, but history always has the last word.